Perhaps you're looking for motivation or encouragement to turn that 'crazy idea' you have into a real product! I say, "why wait? Just dig in and go for it!" Create for the sake of creating!
I think that we all dream of inventing or creating some amazing cool gizmo/widget/whatever that will be highly sought-after by consumers everywhere! Millions will be sold! There will be at least 2 of them in every house in America. The entire world will be abuzz about the cool, amazing, life-changing thingamajig that YOU invented and created! “Dream Big”, they say!
There’s certainly nothing wrong with dreaming big! In fact, those big dreams are hugely motivating for many people. But let’s face reality: It’s a tall order to create a world-changing product. Heck, sometimes it’s even difficult to create a ‘mildly successful’ product, right?
Once reality sinks in some might just say “well, if I can’t be reasonably sure that the product is going to be successful, why bother at all? After all, it takes a lot of time, effort and, oftentimes, money to develop a concept, build a prototype and test a new idea. What if it’s a total flop?” I say, “So what if it is?” Of course, if your income and livelihood depend on your creations to bring in enough cashflow to pay the bills, you’ll eventually have to find some success…or starve to death. But, I’m guessing that most of us are more interested in exploring our creative pursuits as a hobby or maybe even as a side gig, but not as a primary income. In other words, if your creation makes exactly zero dollars (or maybe even loses a few dollars), there’s no harm done except maybe just a bit of a hit to you ego. But I posit that that is TOTALLY OK!! Sometimes you should just create for the sake of creating! Who cares if no one else buys one? Who cares if you spend $50 to make a prototype and it turns out uglier or less functional than you hoped for? Just create for the sake of creating. No other motivation should be required! Get those creative juices flowing and JUST CREATE!
Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to get my Texas Challenge Coins Kickstarter Project funded. A few months prior to the launch, I had no clue that I’d be designing and shipping coins. Sometime around October of 2020 I kind of got itchin’ to do another Kickstarter project. Initially, my only goal was to get another creative pursuit started and put it on Kickstarter and I honestly didn’t care what it was! I just wanted to create SOMETHING …. ANYTHING! Admittedly, sometimes my process is “ok, I have this cool idea! How do I pursue it?” However, in the case of the Texas Challenge Coins my process was “OK, I’ve got this pursuit in mind, so what’s the cool idea going to be?” I just wanted to create for the sake of creating! It took me a several weeks of exploring different ideas in extremely varied categories before I settled on making challenge coins. It then took several more weeks for me to settle on what the coin designs would be. Afterwards, it took a few weeks to plan the Kickstarter project and launch it. That project ended up being funded at about $1700 dollars and I’ve sold nearly twice that amount elsewhere (online and offline) since the end of the Kickstarter Project. Just last week, I placed an order for more coins to replenish my stock. Some amount of financial success has come, but my original goal had nothing to do with that…I just wanted to create for the sake of creating. If you create with no particular bigger goal in mind, you never know what success you might accidentally stumble upon!
The U.S. Patent Office is filled with inventions that were invented by accident! Over 170 years ago a guy named Walter Hunt was just fiddling around with some wire at his desk. We’ve all done this, right? Our mind is busy going over the problems of the day and your fingers are just mindlessly doing their own thing subconsciously. So there was Walter, just bending and twisting the wire around in his fingers as his mind was wandering to other things. (There’s hardly a more primitive form of creativity than just letting your fingers fiddle around with whatever is within arms reach.) Walter was just randomly twisting and turning and bending and flexing the wire and not giving an ounce of thought to any end goal. His fingers were just creating for the sake of creating! Suddenly, Walter looks down and notices that he had “accidentally” twisted a few coils in the wire and that it was a bit springy and that it could clasp on to itself all while maintaining its springiness. Walter Hunt patented the Safety Pin soon afterward on April 10, 1849.
Go create! Create for the sake of creativity!
Jim
P.S. Puzzometry Puzzles were also invented by much the same process. I was just creating (anything i could think of creating using a laser cutter) just for the sake of creating! It took several years for me to realize that the puzzle could/would become a viable commercial product!
